Cloanto at Saku 2001

Cloanto had the pleasure of joining Saku 2001, the Amiga event
organized by the Finnish Amiga Users Group
and held at Heureka, the Finnish
Science Center, on September 1st.

During the event the public and Cloanto developers had a chance to
exchange ideas about the Amiga universe in general and Amiga-PC
connectivity and emulation in particular. The latest experimental version
of WinUAE, which includes a just-in-time (JIT) compiler created with the
gracious contribution of Bernd Meyer, was available for testing, and
impressed for its amazing speed. Tasks such as opening folders, compiling Personal Paint with SAS/C, image
processing and word processing appeared to be more than 10-20 times faster
(more than 50 times faster at certain specific operations, such as color
reduction with Personal Paint) than with the emulation as included in Amiga Forever
4.0. Use of DirectX functionality and native x86 code for
graphics-intensive tasks resulted in speeds which appeared to easily
exceed those of JIT-enabled emulators on other platforms, while at the
same time supporting the widest possible range of hardware. Like other
programs which have recently been announced, although very
fast, this new emulation still needs a few refinements, after which it
will be available as a recommended and free upgrade to users of Amiga
Forever. Buzzwords like "custom chips", "native x86 code", "virtual
memory", "TCP/IP", "run
from CD" and "fastest Amiga ever", to mention only a few,
while perhaps not completely familiar to those who just joined the
enthusiasm for Amiga emulation, have been associated with
Amiga Forever since
1997, when Cloanto made it possible for emulation to
grow and prosper to the levels it
reached today without fear of legal consequences. Cloanto also announced that it will soon release a
completely new and free tool to the emulation community.

The pictures below include photographs taken during the show, at the
auditorium, and during the raffle of T-shirts.
The first picture (provided both in the original size in true
color PNG format and as a more compact JPEG image) is a grab of the screen
as shown during the demonstrations of Amiga Forever at Saku. It
includes two Amiga sessions running side by side, one running Workbench 1.3, and the other with the most recent ROM
and operating system and featuring the JIT compiler,
TCP/IP, virtual memory, etc., while on the Desktop a window shows the
contents of an Amiga connected to the PC via Amiga
Explorer.

Some pictures courtesy of Sami Ylönen and Risto
Mäki-Petäys. Thanks to Tuomo Mämmelä for making available his Amiga 600. Thanks again to all organizers and attendees for making this great
experience possible.

Links

Personal Note

Thank you again to all organizers and attendees of SAKU 2001! I greatly
enjoyed the visit. Special thanks also to all those Amiga Friends who took
extra time to accompany me and make this experience so special. The pictures
below are from a small 640x480 camera, so the quality is perhaps not as good
as the memories, but still the two play very well together, especially in
consideration of all the Finnish drinks I had a chance to taste... As you
can see immediately after the "questions/beer anyone?" speech
somebody promptly offered me a beer, and that's how the post-show evening
started. Not sure if the trick will work next time as well though... ;-)

As I am here, I would like to invite you all to our
Codex Alpe Adria event, which takes place near
Venice, Italy.